- Aevann : OP is a forgetful DUMMY
- X : AI manipulation
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I think most people just do not want to deal with actual real politics, when engaging with their hobby that is meant to reduce stress. Obviously, the table politics of my Oath group does not affect my mental health as much as my actual governments recent decisions.
This! Games are often an escape from reality.
I don't stop being a trans person in Mississippi while I'm playing Ark Nova. My very existence has been made political.
Reddit becomes the most insufferable place as soon as Trump becomes President
I'm not sure how it would even be possible. People can talk and interact freely.
"Keep politics out of XYZ" is such an inherently political thing to say too lol
Ten times out of 10 it's really "keep the politics I disagree with out of XYZ" with the person saying it not realizing that they don't view the things they agree with as political.
I always thought when pekole talk about politics or work, their friendship is oretty shallow and have nothing else to talk about.
My buddies and I play board games all the time and politics hasn't come up in 20 years. We have fun and interesting things to talk about.
I don't know. If you and your closest friends don't feel comfortable discussing your deeply held beliefs and the concerns you have for the direction some people want to take the country in your name... Maybe they're just buddies.
Politics are almost as boring as religion.
We have other interests that keep the conversation going.
You are grabbing at straws.
ohhh good point and straws are super bad for the environment and sea turtles. i'm sorry.
Unironically, this comment is pretty much what your post looks like.
No it's not, there's a difference between playing a game and yelling at someone about something political. That's what people mean.
The True Heir to the Acorn Monarchy 
x86 
lost
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You may think you know how much Intel is struggling, but the reality is worse.
The once-mighty American innovation powerhouse is losing market share in multiple areas that are critical to its profitability. Its many competitors include not just the AI juggernaut Nvidia but smaller rivals and even previously stalwart allies like Microsoft.
One flashing warning sign: In the latest quarter reported by both companies, Intel's perennial also-ran, AMD, actually eclipsed Intel's revenue for chips that go into data centers. This is a stunning reversal: In 2022, Intel's data-center revenue was three times that of AMD.
AMD and others are making huge inroads into Intel's bread-and-butter business of making the world's most cutting-edge and powerful general-purpose chips, known as CPUs, short for central processing units.
Even worse, more and more of the chips that go into data centers are GPUs, short for graphics processing units, and Intel has minuscule market share of these high-end chips. GPUs are used for training and delivering AI.
By focusing on the all-important metric of performance per unit of energy pumped into their chips, AMD went from almost no market share in servers to its current ascendant position, says AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster. As data centers become ever more rapacious for energy, this emphasis on efficiency has become a key advantage for AMD.
Notably, Intel still has about 75% of the market for CPUs that go into data centers. The disconnect between that figure and the company's share of revenue from selling a wider array of chips for data centers only serves to illustrate the core problem driving its reversal of fortunes.
This situation looks likely to get worse, and quickly. Many of the companies spending the most on building out new data centers are switching to chips that have nothing to do with Intel's proprietary architecture, known as x86, and are instead using a combination of a competing architecture from ARM and their own custom chip designs.
A spokeswoman for Intel says the company is focused on simplifying and strengthening its product portfolio, and advancing its manufacturing and foundry capabilities while optimizing costs. Intel interim Co-Chief Executive Michelle Johnston Holthaus recently said that 2025 will be a "year of stabilization" for the company. Intel is currently seeking a permanent leader after its CEO Pat Gelsinger was pushed out last month.
The decades that developers spent writing software for Intel's chips mean that Intel remains a giant, even as its market share has shrunk, and that legacy will limit how quickly Intel's revenues can decline in the future.
Analysts estimate Intel's 2024 revenue was about $55 billion, just behind Nvidia's approximately $60 billion. Intel still has the lion's share of the market for desktop and notebook CPUs—around 76%, overall, according to Mercury Research.
AMD recently formed an alliance with Intel to collaborate on support and development of the x86 ecosystem that both companies make chips for. Papermaster says that his own company continues to invest in this ecosystem even as AMD also develops ARM-based chips for some applications, such as networking and embedded devices.
For a concrete example of Intel's challenges, look at Amazon, the world's biggest provider of cloud computing. More than half of the CPUs Amazon has installed in its data centers over the past two years were its own custom chips based on ARM's architecture, Dave Brown, Amazon vice president of compute and networking services, said recently.
This displacement of Intel is being repeated all across the big providers and users of cloud computing services. Microsoft and Google have also built their own custom, ARM-based CPUs for their respective clouds. In every case, companies are moving in this direction because of the kind of customization, speed and efficiency that custom silicon allows.
All those companies are also making their own custom, ARM-based chips for AI workloads, an area where Intel has missed the boat almost entirely. Then there's the 800-pound gorilla in AI, Nvidia. Many of Nvidia's current-generation AI systems have Intel CPUs in them, but ARM-based chips are increasingly taking center stage in the company's bleeding-edge hardware.
Intel's repeated flubs in entering markets for new kinds of computing and new applications for chips are a textbook example of a big, profitable incumbent becoming a victim of the innovator's dilemma, says Doug O'Laughlin, an industry analyst at SemiAnalysis, which recently published a blistering report on Intel. The innovator's dilemma holds that powerful companies that are unwilling to cannibalize their biggest sources of revenue can be overtaken by upstarts that build competing products that start out small, but which can ultimately take over the market which the incumbent dominates—like the mobile chips which ARM started off with.
In 1988, former Intel CEO Andy Grove published a book called Only the Paranoid Survive, which highlighted the ways that companies have to be vigilant about what's coming next, and be willing to disrupt themselves and pursue new technologies.
What he intended as a warning to all companies has since become a prophecy foretelling Intel's current difficulties.
"The book is literally about the importance of not missing strategic inflections, and then Intel proceeds to miss every single strategic inflection since," says O'Laughlin.
Then there are laptops. After decades of trying to make it happen, 2024 was finally the year of credible, ARM-based laptops running Windows, thanks to efforts by Microsoft to make Windows on ARM work. The company convinced other companies to port their own software, and created cowtools that allow most existing programs to run on the new laptops, in emulation. Chips in these devices are made by Qualcomm, and benchmarks show that they can finally compete with Apple's M-class mobile processors, which are also based on a combination of ARM technology and a great deal of custom chip design by Apple's formidable in-house team.
Another bastion of market share and profits for Intel, the PC gaming market, is also showing early signs of erosion. Portable gaming systems like Valve's Steam Deck and the Lenovo Legion Go, which can run even very demanding games, use processors from AMD. Future devices that will be part of the company's plan to license its custom OS to other manufacturers may also use ARM-based ones.
Inherent in Intel's woes is the way its vertically integrated structure, long an asset, now weighs on the company's bottom line and ability to innovate. Unlike other companies that either design chips or manufacture them, Intel has stuck to a seemingly antiquated model of doing both.
Intel reported a $16 billion loss in its most recent quarter as it spent big to transform into a contract manufacturer—that is, a company that also manufactures chips for other companies, even competitors—and catch up to rival TSMC, which now produces the world's most cutting-edge chips.
Analysts expect Intel to return to profitability in 2025, but it won't be clear for years whether the company's big manufacturing bets will ultimately pay off.
One of the big bets of Intel's recently departed CEO Gelsinger, was Intel's attempt to leapfrog TSMC in terms of chip technology. What it calls its "18A" tech could in theory allow its own chips, and those it makes for outsiders, to once again be the most cutting-edge, and the fastest, on the planet. The company has said it could regain that title by 2026. Intel recently announced it had signed a deal with Amazon to make custom chips for the company, using its 18A technology.
Even if Intel can once again lead the industry with its technology, the best case scenario for Intel's own products is that it regains dominance in a market that continues to shrink—the x86 CPU one, says O'Laughlin. The removal of Gelsinger, who was betting on an all-in strategy for Intel to regain dominance both in the market for its own chips and in serving outside companies, suggests that Intel's board agrees that the company can't continue to count on being the best in the world at everything.
All of these challenges and conflicting priorities may push Intel to someday split in two, severing its product side from manufacturing. Intel Co-CEO David Zinsner recently said that spinning off the company's manufacturing side is an "open question."
It's also possible, in the worst case, that a fate even worse than being dismembered could be in store for Intel.
Rene Haas, CEO of ARM, recently observed that Intel has long been an innovation powerhouse, but that in chipmaking and design, there are countless companies that don't innovate fast enough—and no longer exist.
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https://apollo-news.net/eu-behoerde-fordert-echtzeitueberwachung-von-handys-und-laptops-ab-2025/
(Translation by kiwis)
A EU authority is demanding real-time surveillance of phones and laptops starting in 2025. They demand that the police shall be able to read messages in the entire European Union in real-time. The occasion: fighting organized crime. For the "High-Level Group (HLG) on access to data for effective law enforcement", data protection and privacy play nothing but a formal role.
The HLG consists of members from the EU Commission, representatives of the EU member states, and law enforcement agencies. On November 22, the HLG demanded that the EU Commission submit a proposition in the coming year to allow a real-time access on communications data. This is reported by Euractiv. Already in May, the HLG presented its preliminary research results in a report. The group was set up in 2023 and works on finding out how law enforcement agencies can get an easier access to data in order to fight against organized crime. In a concluding report from November 15, the group presented its results and demands.
Thus, the concluding report criticized that the different regulations regarding data retention in the individual EU states lead to problems in cross-border criminal prosecution. Specifically, the HLG demanded in their preliminary report from May that the industry should be mandated to cooperate with the agencies so that the police gets access to data that allows for an identification of users, such as the storing of IP addresses. In addition, they demand that non-cooperative electronic communication services shall be subject to prohibitive sanctions.
Read messages even before they are sent
Already in May, they demanded that there shall be a EU initiative which allows for looking at "data in transit", thus do real-time surveillance. In the concluding report from November 15, the HLG doubled down on the demand and strongly demanded that the Commission issue a corresponding proposition in 2025. By real-time surveillance, the HLG means that messages are able to be read even before they are sent, or shortly after they reached the recipient.
In the concluding report, they also said that the fact that they can't access the data in real-time allegedly causes big difficulties for crime prevention. Police officers have to make use of methods like installing cameras or microphones, which are dangerous for the officers. If you are not able to read messages, all other persons surrounding a suspect must be surveilled too. The HLG also demands more funding in the coming EU budget to stock up on means for "digital forensic cowtools".
Currently, there is no mutual regulation for mass data retention in the European Union because the European Court of Justice has declared the prior guideline on data retention invalid in 2014. The European Data Protection Committee criticized the HLG's demands in a statement on November 4. The demands would strongly invade the right to data protection and privacy. The committee also criticized the demand to weaken encryption.
————-
The article itself seems to be based on another, and the following is just one statement by the High Level Group
Retention seems to be relegated to IP addresses and ports for long term retention to allow identification, likely things like times and any other info not deemed to be violating privacy (in their subhuman idea of privacy)
About encryption it recommends looking further into encryption and how things like backdoors might affect the security, as they can't enforce all methods to simply be weaker but do find it rightful for law enforcement to have a way to cross the hurdle of encryption.
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I'm a petty beefy guy. Have been for most of my adult life. I'm changing my eating and hitting the gym again to get healthy, but I don't think I'll ever be super thin again.
There seem to be a decent amount of men who find plus size women sexy, which I think is fantastic. But as a man, I can't say that my experience has been proportional or at all similar. Outside of fetish communities, I've not encountered a woman who was sincerely attracted to someone with my body type, and thats... hard.
I don't want to be a fetish. I don't want to be in a feeder-type relationship. I want to be healthy, but I also accept that healthiness for me might still be a hefty body type. The BHM communities I've found on reddit are very sexually oriented. I'm not here to kink shame anyone, but that's just not me.
I'm a man with a deep capacity for love and connection. I'm very connected to my feelings and really would like to find a meaningful relationship based on mutual interest, attraction, and compatible personalities.
I just don't know where to find women who would be interested in dating a guy like me. The apps are out. So are the popular dating sites. I just feel like modern dating isn't made for the plus sized man.
Does anyone have some good advice for me? I'm a 46 year old man, who at this point, is kind of at a loss.
ing too hard
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Not trying to play devils advocate for a racist weirdo, but how are you sure? Not trying to argue, just curious what gave it away.
This is, of course, assuming it's the OK hand gesture. If it's something less obscure, the answer is self explanatory
He was taking a selfie in the mirror. The hand that was at his side was doing the white power gesture. Hands do not naturally fall like that… so no.
EDIT: Hinge has actually emailed me to say they've taken action against him, so I'm not mistaken as you're inferring.
Her previous posts indicate she absolutely hates men, but is having trouble finding her disney prince on dating apps because they all love hitler. 
https://old.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/1chuwpl/i_feel_like_giving_up_online_dating_men/
-
TheUbieSeether
: Since ping groups wah wah wah :carpbottom:
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A foreign billionaire has seized the United States government.
— DCCC (@dccc) February 3, 2025
Is he a foreigner from Canada? Or Africa?
Bonus video here's Elon with his McLaren F1 and his ex wife of his 
child
this is who I am now
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Introduction
I was scrolling the dreges of reddit for content, as you do..
I like looking in the BPD subreddit, usually I can find some of the juiciest drama there
_____
Now as many of you know, most diagnosed BPD cases are found in women.
That means a lot of posts on /r/BPD deal with relationships, romance and raging hysteria.
Though, sometimes you get a rare gem. A BPD male, or in this case, a self diagnosed BPD male.
____
Meet /u/FrankBuns
A twenty something that managed to land one of the most controversial posts in /r/BPD this month.
Quite the accomplishment!
I'll go over some of that later, FrankBuns has been pretty open on reddit.
The Controversy
Now surprisingly, despite all the times I've seen otherwise, the denizens of /r/BPD did not pat FrankBuns on the back
Apparently, the communal braincell all redditors fight over was well and alive in this post's comments:
Why worry about the diagnosis. In my experience having a diagnosis doesn't do much for you aside from changing how doctors think about you. Worry about treating the symptoms you're experiencing and improving your quality of life. Diagnosis are just unnecessary labels that can come with stigma and lack of understanding.
FrankBuns: Because I want to get better, and idk, I feel like that would have to be the first step. I think there's a lot of reason in your comment, I'd like to think that even if I don't have BPD (which I still believe that I do) then learning the skills to handle it would be beneficial if not for dealing with my issues, then helping a loved one or friend in the future who might be going through the same stuff.
Then do DBT, anyone can do DBT.
Redditor Sneeding about "the system"
everything's a racket, it wouldn't exist in a capitalist society if it weren't.
dsm just allows clinicians to standardize care and makes billing easier, it's not any grand insight into human existence. look up some articles about dsm5 and professionals in the field who take exception with the changes from dsm4. It's just academics bickering, whose pet theories get to dominate.
Yes, I'm bitter. Grants Pass decision was a direct indictment of the failure of American care, we had 40 years of funding to provide treatment and people don't feel like we were effective now and now we aren't focusing on treatment anymore. This whole field dropped the ball and vulnerable people will suffer. Frick the dsm.
You'd be better off reading the bhagavad gita or dostoyevsky than the dsm if you're trying to heal.
____
Right about now, you may be asking:
"wait a sec, Lilmarsey, how do you know that this is actually a moid posting this and not an FtM?"
I'm so glad you asked, now you'll have to see it, too:
I will not be posting the other two pictures, you can go to
His whole butthole was out
It makes sense that he'd have some of these traits, given that this is a
✨ homosexual ✨
____
Hmm...funny you should say that.
_____
mental illness comes with friends
FrankBuns has also posted about shrooms and has expressed interest in DMT.
He was also a chronic masturbator.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/10pvv17/oops/
FrankBuns also has a track record of being a bit of a hypochondriac.
Making posts like "what is this dark spot on my foot", and "why does my foot have orange spots"
https://i.imgur.com/gallery/r-askdocs-QPuy48p
He's also a very active furry, and stupid enough to facedoxx.
I'm sure you may also be wondering
"Wow! I wonder the relationship FrankBuns ominously mentioned went?"
I'm so glad you asked:
The "break"
As we all know, either party asking for a time out in a relationship usually bodes badly for relationship stability.
"Wow, that didn't last long, did it?"
_______
TLDR: typical redditor that I spent way too much time writing about
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Kiwibee
:
#deathtoscrotes
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SlogGoblin
:
- forgor : porn= funny
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In the last couple hours, any posts calling for or even just asking about a ban are removed by mods, despite all the comments on said posts before deletion being in support of banning links.
This is especially ironic considering Wicked's entire message is anti-fascist
https://old.reddit.com/r/musicals/comments/1i7sovv/rwicked/
Edit: thanks to user /u/p_rantTA for this link
https://i.imgur.com/a/posts-removed-by-r-wicked-EiSOy5x
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I JUST FOUND OUT THAT PUFF IS NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE OR COLLECT MONEY WHILE HE’S LOCKED UP SO I’MA SEND HIS HALF OF THE MONEY TO JUSTIN
— ye (@kanyewest) February 7, 2025
King Cobra has become the liqour 
.
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!Coolcobras the bwoy is dwown bad. He's beywond fwucking twoasted fwor appwoximatewy 7:30 pm Cwobwa Standard Tim (yesterday).
Wocwl Backup
Clips
Pwesidents Day/Bweaking dwown in tears 
Vodka tumble 
A smaww pwour
His dwink cwombwo is 50-50 Mwonster and Vodka. Fwor swome reaswon this is stwong 
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/kingcobrajfs-josh-saunders.22713/post-20620413
swomeonye ping bwoozers pls
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Is it me or is she turning into an absolute hog?
Here is her before shot.
This is where her physique peaks in my honest opinion. Here she appears to be of an ethereal beauty. Her incandescent image flows gracefully into my willing eyes like water to an african child. This is quite the contrast to her current appearance.
Notice how her face, which once looked as if it were chiseled from marble by a master craftsman... Is now round and plump as if she were nothing more than a common stone? Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying she is ugly. She is definitely still better looking than someone like @AnHeroedOats. But this is Wongyoung we are talking about. She is supposed to be more than that. She is supposed to be a goddess up in the heavens amongst the likes of Madoka Kaname. As something for us to aspire to be. Not as some regular slut just like you and me. You honestly think the producers came up with her iconic butt twirl?
And speaking of the butt twirl (which I actually enjoy in her routine and am only being half serious when I say she's a whore for forcing the producers to include that smut in her videos. But look at what her butt twirl looks like after gaining all that mass?
It just doesn't have the same flow to it. It is... So much meatier. Take a look at how it looked before.
Notice how effortless that was? She flew. She is literally flying right there. What a disgrace it is to see such a thing of beauty reduced to this. I wish Wongyoung would take some time to think about the legacy she would like to leave behind.
Is this another reason to like the Japanese more than Koreans?
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Thread theme btw if anyone knows more Chappell Roan songs like this let me know, I love this song
When Kennedy ran for President in 2024, he was a joke. The very weird failson of a famous dead politician throwing a strange tantrum because Joe Biden was too pro-vaccine. His announcement speech in 2023 would get taken down by YouTube because of his strange rants about vaccines, and the Brandonslide in the Democratic primaries was too powerful to be stopped - Kennedy couldn't stop Biden, Phillips couldn't stop Biden, Williamson couldn't stop Biden, not even my GOAT Jason Palmer could stop Biden.
Remeber this? That was so awesome. Anyway, Kennedy was a weird joke like Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips - until he announced he was going to run third party, then he became a very serious threat. His early polls were incredible - some (obviously bollocks ones) were at 15%, and he was generally polled at around 8% - 10% near the start of his run. Of course, fate would not smile upon RFK. After a graveyard shaped closet was unleashed, he eventually gave up and endorsed Trump. Kennedyheads, who had given up there time and money to a real outsider, saw Kennedy give up and endorse a former President. They need to be talked off the rooftops, but are they dumb stupid morons? When has a third party candidate ever really mattered? Three, arguably five, times;
1924: Calvin Coolidge 
(R) v John Davis (D) v Robert La Follette 
(P)
1968: Richard Nixon 
(R) v Hubert Humphrey 
(D) v George Wallace 
(AI)
1992: Bill Clinton 
(D) v George H.W Bush 
(R) v Ross Perot 
(I)
These third parties were either marginal influences in the party that had a great amount of regional influence, but a marginal voice if any at all in the party they were associated with - so they struck out and walked their own path, and enthralled millions with their unique messaging. This longpost will look at what they did right, and where Kennedy went wrong.
There are two other third party runs that did very well, but I'm not counting them for a few reasons
The election of 1912 had Progressive Teddy Roosevelt comfortably humiliate Republican Howard Taft in the best ever performance for a third party, coming second with 88 EVs to Howard Taft's 8 EVs. I'm not counting Teddy because he was a former president - I think any third party run would be made stronger by the candidate being a former President.
The election of 1848 had Martin Van Buren win 10% of the vote with the Free Soil party, an anti-slavery party - impressive, but he's not included because he is both a former President, and his third party run had him compete against the Democrats and the Whigs. Around 1896 is when the two party system as we understand it emerges, and the cut-off point to studying third party runs begins.
1924 - Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Progressive Party (Wisconsin) 
"Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from men who are aggressive for what is wrong."
Wisconsin has always been a liberal state - meaning that in the early 20th century, it was a Republican strong hold, dominated La Follette and his son, Robert La Follette Jr. La Follette's progressivism was the old school, prairie kind - born and raised on farms, with a conservative "got mine" bent to it that pleasingly led to a dedication to civil liberties and isolationism.
Come 1924, and the Democrats and Republicans both nominate conservatives. Calvin Coolidge won re-nomination as the Republican, while after 103 ballots John Davis was settled on when delegates at the convention started to run out of money had to leave. If you think the duopoly is bad today, Coolidge and Davis aligned on nearly every issue, differing only on condemning the Klan (Davis did so, Silent Cal did not) and on tariffs (Davis liked them low, Coolidge liked them high). Otherwise they agreed on a limited government, deregulated industry and tax cuts. American conservatism has never had it so good, the uniparty in fundamental agreement.
La Follette, not a man loyal to any particular party despite being a Republican, was angry that neither party had nominated any kind of liberal. At the 4th Conference for Progressive Political Action, 1,200 delegates composed of union members, socialists, liberals but not communists, frick off Foster 
, nominated Robert La Follette and Burton Wheeler, a ticket that called for mass nationalisation of companies, tax hikes and support for labour unions. And he did amazingly - despite what the map may tell you.
"Well winning one state is impressive for a third party, but is it really that good?"
Yep. He won 16.6% of the vote, nearly half the votes of Davis, won his home state of Wisconsin and beat Davis (coming in second) in the following states; Oregon, California, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Iowa, Minnesota and both the Dakotas 
. These are some pretty astonishing results, located mostly in the Western plains with a higher amount of farms then normal. So, how on earth did La Follette do so well?
It can't be denied that his unique politics played a role. When both parties have so much in common, it's clear there's an unheard voice in that election and La Follette was able to amplify that voice. There was so much frustration that he near totally unified the left, leaving only the communists out in the cold. Another advantage he had over Coolidge and Davis is that he was actually the one to campaign. Coolidge had a pretty understandable reason - his son Calvin Jr died in a freak tennis accident, when he got a blister that turned sepsis. Obviously in a deep grief, Coolidge rarely left the White House and his campaign speeches were mostly about his theory of governance rather than addressing the issues or his opponents. By contrast, Davis just didn't like campaigning much and in his meeting with party bosses would need his arm twisted to say to he supports them because showing affection in any way was simply not his character. Equally valid reasons, I'm sure one would agree.
Coolidge was always going to defeat to Davis thanks to the booming economy, but La Follette turned Davis into a joke - to this day, Davis' 28.8% amount of the vote is the worst a Democrat has ever done in the Popular Vote, isolating his support near entirely in the Jim Crow South where votes were tightly controlled. To explain just how lacking Davis' support was, electoral votes in the electoral college are determined by population. California had 13 EVs, Alabama had 12. California, won by Coolidge, had 1,263,413 votes with about 400,000 going to La Follette. Alabama, won by Davis, had 157,971 votes, with 45,005 going to Coolidge. Underscoring just how catastrophic Davis' loss was, during the 1864 US election, the South was not able to vote in the election due to the "rebellion" thing - and McCellan still got 44.9% of the vote against Lincoln.
La Follette would die in 1925 at 70, meaning he never got to see his work vindicated by the Democratic party. In 1928, Al Smith would win the Democratic nomination. A progressive, urban Catholic, the south would abandon him in droves due to fear of Papal influence while the north continued to bet on the Republicans - with President Herbert Hoover winning in one of the biggest landslides at the time. Hoover would be left holding the bag when the economy crashed, New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt would unite the Democrats and the country to implement many of La Follette's ambitions - except of course, without the isolationism.
1968 - George Wallace, American Independence Party (Alabama) 
George Wallace standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block the entrance of black students. "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
From a left wing populist to a right wing populist, George Wallace was about as anti-La Follette as you could get. With Hubert Humphrey supporting measures to integrate society and Nixon opposing de-jure segregation, George Wallace, who had built a national profile as one of the top opponents to integration, ran third party to appeal to the raving bigots. The Wallace campaign plan was to win enough states to prevent Nixon from getting 270 Electoral Votes, force the election to the House and work out a deal where Nixon would uphold Segregation and Wallace released his EVs to let Nixon become President. His plan was to speak aggressively and passionately, decrying the elitism of the mainstream parties and "handouts" from the Great Society like Nixon did.
But he also mimicked Humphrey with his support for unions. He had no issue with an honest days pay for an honest days work - but wasn't it so unfair you were paying for lazy people? While he struck a middle ground economically, he went in a different direction for the war - Nixon was "peace", Humphrey was for status quo, and Wallace was ramping it up. An infamous quote of his is "We win in 90 days or we pull out", which sometimes misinterpreted as a peace plan. Wallace wanted to destroy North Vietnam, to teach Red China and the Soviet Union a lesson 
. More importantly, he didn't talk about segregation unless pressed about it, where he would of course defend it. Wallace's victory plan was to build a coalition of single issue voters, racists, anti-welfare union workers, warhawks and people that enjoyed him picking fights with hippies, to cause the deadlock.
Trust me, picking fights with hippies is critical to the central thesis regarding Kennedy. To generate enough media attention, he used inflammatory language to create controversy. "The only four letter words don't know are W-O-R-K and S-O-A-P!" he would say of his protestors. When it came to the Lyndon Johnson's 
protestors? "If any anarchists lie in front of my automobile, it'll be the last automobile they ever lie in front of." Sometimes he'd even get into shouting matches with his protestors. When called a fascist, he boasted "I was killing fascists while you were in diapers!" Another memorable line was when he grinned and chatted to a heckler. "I love you, I really do. Because when you come to me, I get another million votes." People loved it. While Humphrey was in full shill mode, trying to pick up the pieces of the Democratic party, and while Nixon was chilling not doing anything at all because he was winning massively, Wallace was the man in the arena, ranting and raving in a way people loved.
Wallace at his peak was polling at an astonishing 20% of the vote, but crashed out pretty badly during LeMay's first press conference. "We seem to have a phobia of nuclear weapons" LeMay began. He would continue with "it doesn't make much of a difference to me if I have go to a jungle in Vietnam and get killed with a rusty knife or get killed with a nuclear weapon. As a matter of fact, if I had the choice I would lean towards nuclear weapon." Wallace, visibly panicked, steps in to say "General LeMay hasn't advocated for nuclear weapons, not at all. He discussed nuclear weapons with you, he is against the use of nuclear weapons and I am too." Moments later, LeMay was asked if he would use nukes on Vietnam. "If I found it necessary." Like a fricking sitcom.
The consequences were swift and brutal, with Wallace plateauing from 20% of the vote to around 14%-12%, and he would ultimately get 13.5% of the vote and a far better EV count than La Follette.
301 EVs is a pretty respectable amount from Nixon, but Wallace's defeat was a lot closer then one might think. The Midwestern states had the powerful union votes split between Wallace and Humphrey, letting Nixon sweep the anti-union vote easily. But Nixon only won several Southern states with less then 40% of the vote. Had Wallace preformed better or rather, not suffered from the LeMay fiasco, he could have won North Carolina or Tennessee due to thinness of Nixon's victory. The margin for Nixon's victory goes from 301 - 191 - 46 to 289 - 191 - 58, still a win but a narrow win when you need 270 to win without a deadlock.
In turn, Missouri and Ohio both have Nixon with a margin of roughly 1% over Humphrey. If Wallace didn't have the nuke comments weighing him down, he could have tapped better into the Conservatives of the state and allowed Humphrey to win them both. If those states went blue but Nixon got every vote from North Carolina, the margin of victory is 269 - 229 - 45, just one EV from preventing Wallace's actual victory of forcing Nixon to end integration. Granted, this is all a lot of what ifs. But Wallace's defeat was a very narrow thing.
After the election, Wallace crawled back to the Democrats and became a bizarrely accepted part of it - to the point there were rumours of a Humphrey/Wallace ticket in 1972. He would ultimately come third in the 1972 primaries, despite being shot, and managed to outlive both Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon, despite being shot. His legacy is of interest only to historians, his riot having accomplished nothing at all. De-jure segregation is illegal, and de-facto segregation remains commonplace all over America - no thanks to Wallace's tantrum.
1992 - Ross Perot, Independent (Texas) 
"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled."
After dealing with two populists, it only makes sense our final candidate before Kennedy is Ross Perot - an anti-populist. A man who went on TV, promised to raise taxes and cut benefits, and soared to the top of the polls.
That's not an exaggeration - Gallup had at one point Ross Perot leading with 39% of the vote, to Bush's 31% and Clinton's 29% of the vote, past the 4% margin of error. As well as these other candidates have done, none of them have ever been polled at outright beating both candidates.
His key policy was going against the grain, and embracing protectionism when Bush and Clinton were both enthusiastic supporters of NAFTA. During the debates, he eerily prophesied "there will be a giant sucking sound going south" if NAFTA passes due to Mexico's lax environmental and labour laws. His other
Those were his most notable policies, and what he really railed against Bush and Clinton on. Bush had got them in this mess, and Clinton's liberal policies weren't gonna get them out. But he also had an eclectic series of other policies - like "Direct Democracy" through electronic town halls (fitting for a CEO of a company that specialised in computers), and a less involved America (although not isolationist).
Also unique was his messaging. While Clinton used platitudes and uplifting advertising, and Bush viciously attacked Clinton as a philandering communist plant, Perot's defining ads would be him buying 30 minutes of air time and frankly explaining what he thought was right for the country and how he would do it, with CHARTS BABY!
It's goes against every single populist idea there's ever been. Perot had policy that didn't have "popular" aspects of it, delivered in a frank, clear and detailed manner. By nearly any political junkie's understanding of the American electorate, he should have flopped, his advertisements discovered by pathetic teenagers saying "so true!" and calling themselves Perotstans in the new 20s.
There is a lot more to the story then this, worthy of it's own article (I haven't even mentioned Perot thinking the CIA was sabotaging him or dropping out of the race), but that is the short version when it comes to analysing Perot's place in third party history.
With Bush losing, the Republicans generally considered Perot to have stolen votes from Bush and handing Clinton the election - the facts don't reflect this, Perot generally took from both bases, but the Republicans grudgingly took notice and for the midterms introduced the Contract With America, an ambitious set of reforms that included the Balanced Budget Amendment to outlaw deficit and term limits for members of Congress - all of which failed to pass.
Perot would try his luck again in 1996, forming the Reform Party and couping it's nomination from Richard Lamm, and getting decent results - 8.4% is nothing to sneeze at, and more then enough to win the party federal funding. The party's apex would be in 1998, when former pro-wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura won the Minnesota Gubernatorial race. The Reform party would crumble shortly afterwards, as Progressives and Paleoconservatives feuded with each other over which way to take the party - ultimately the Paleoconservatives won, nominating Pat Buchanan and getting less then 1% in 2000. Ross Perot for his part endorsed George Bush.
2024 - Robert Francis Kennedy Jr, Independent (California) 
"Why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us, or destroy a river or a waterway, which is supposed to belong to the whole community?"
What does a left wing populist, a right wing populist, and centrist anti-populist have in common? Why did they succeed when the Greens, the Libertarians, the Communists, and my GOATS the Prohibition Party fail, time after time?
I narrowed it down to three factors.
A wedge issue
A wide coalition
A unique voice
A Wedge Issue
The first and most important step is the wedge issue. La Follette had progressivism, Wallace had segregation and Perot had NAFTA and the deficit. You need to be saying something that no one else is saying, that really resonates. Chase Oliver of the Libertarians fails because his socially progressive message is being used by the Democrats, and his fiscal conservatism is being used by the Republicans. Perhaps there are voters that prefer his message as a whole, but most consider one issue more important and back the party likely to win to accomplish this goal.
It's called the marketplace of ideas, and you need to operate like a business. You can't walk in with a mishmash of policy both party's are offering, you just enter a saturated market. You need a unique selling point no other competitor is offering, or else you'll just be overshadowed by your better funded competitors. (Glad to put my diploma in business to good use).
Did RFK Jr have these unique ideas? In a sense he did. As he pointed out frequently, the COVID-19 vaccines came from one Donald J. Trump's project Warpspeed.
This didn't matter. Despite starting as a hippie thing, of which RFK is a remnant of, vaccine scepticism has become firmly an stance of the fringe right, who Donald Trump commands. They may not like that Trump is pro-vaccine (here's Trump being booed for saying his crowd should take the vaccine) , but he is still their guy. Saying "uhhhh I don't trust those vaccines" doesn't fly when Q is warning people if they don't back Trump JFK Jr will stay dead or whatever.
A Wide Coalition
This is important, third party or first. No single issue is ever popular enough to propel someone to the finish line just on that single issue. You need to have a stance on everything that's in the public consensus as "important". La Follette's sheer uniqueness gave him the widest coalition of the American left there's ever really been, while George Wallace flirted with Warhawks and the unions. Ross Perot's top concern was the economy, but he also had the most non-interventionist foreign policy and some eccentric ideas on general governance.
I conducted a small (tiny) poll asking random people why they thought RFK Jr was running and to assume it was in good faith. The vast majority of the answers I got were "vaccines". I had three other answers of the dozen or so people I asked - one included Bobby's issues with the FDA, which is technically different but ranting about the chemicals in our food is on a similar wavelength to anti-vaccine rhetoric, two answers included opposition to the duopoly, and one came from an outright Bobby fan who correctly identified Bobby has having the most anti-corporate, pro-environment platform in the race (aided by Biden and Harris not actually having a platform).
No one mentioned his isolationist foreign policy, his shockingly progressive stance on race, his transphobia, or his ties to crypto currency. Because he never really talked about it! It was all about the Duopoly, the FDA, or the Vaccines. He seemed to be trying to build this wide net on his policy page, but gave up when it came time to campaign and focused on his most nutjob stances.
Opposing the Two-Party system isn't enough. If it was, Gary Johnson would be included in this list. Remember him? The 2016 Libertarian candidate, running against two of the least popular mainstream candidates ever. He won 3.28% of the vote, not a terrible result for a third party, but hardly what you would expect from arguably the least popular race of all time.
So RFK Jr doesn't really have a wedge issue, and he doesn't really have a coalition. Surely such a wacky candidate has the final part?
A Unique Voice
He sure did have a unique voice! Because spasmodic dysphonia and he does seek treatment for it, it's very insensitive to make fun of it.
But when it comes to how he campaigned, he was rather standard. He appeared on podcasts… and that was about it
Sitting down and explaining your crank beliefs on a podcast may have been unique in 2010, but it's really not that different from sitting down and explaining your crank beliefs on a TV show these days. In fact, Donald Trump has been the one experimenting with messaging, doing a "X Space" and going on a livestream with popular r-slur Adin Ross.
There is one exception to this. One instance where he had a truly message that wasn't about chemicals, delivered in a manner that was unique and appealed to people outside of his eccentric circle - his Superbowl ad, wherein all that was advertised is that a Kennedy is running for president, and he's younger than Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
The same fricking duopoly message that doesn't work.
In all three factors, Kennedy came up short. He couldn't wedge an issue, he refused to expand his circle, and his campaign style was far blander then his bizarre campaign ideas.
Kenndy and his scandals
The Scandals
Scandals are part of any good campaign, and Kennedy is no exception. His campaign may be more famous for the constant, bizarre scandals then any of his very silly beliefs.
All I can say is Kennedy is very, very lucky that the outlandish scandals overshadowed his dark past.
In the same day he was accused of eating a dog, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman he hired as babysitter, allegations he responded to with a blasé "I am not a Church Boy". These very serious criminal allegations were overshadowed by the ludicrous ones, a reoccurring theme. The fact he literally had a brainworm overshadowed how this information got out - it was disclosed during divorce proceedings where he was so callous to his ex-wife during and after the marriage, he drove her to suicide. There is a real darkness in Kennedy, overshadowed by the utter farce much of his campaign seemed to be.
The future of third parties
It's hard to not view the future of third party politics as bleak. The party's are more unified then ever, but that's come with polarisation increasing loyalty to the parties. Wedge issues are by their nature impossible to predict, and in the age of mass media, what's unique is generally a very fleeting thing.
Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Donald Trump got shot about two months ago, and the world has just continued to chug with those events just being part of the news cycle. The third party uniqueness vital for them to stand a chance seems like they're much more likely to just be a fad, rather than anything impactful.
I hope I'm wrong. But more likely, you'll see outsiders - like former Reform party member Donald Trump or Independent Bernie Sanders work within the party, and force compromises along inside the system.
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